Bitcoin Says Goodbye To Silk Road And Hello To Baidu, China's Google

When Silk Road shut down, a major marketplace for Bitcoin went *poof.* The feds have said that over 9.5 million Bitcoins changed hands there during the drug bazaar's two-year lifespan. While the price of Bitcoin took an immediate dive on the news, falling 11% or so, it quickly recovered and is now at a healthy $156 USD/Bitcoin, a six-month high. Bitcoin advocates were cheered by the news, as it supports their argument that buying illegal drugs online is not the only use case for Bitcoin. There are a number of legitimate businesses accepting Bitcoin payments after all, from WordPress to OkCupid. And this week, Bitcoin got an important new one from a part of the world that used to host the real-world Silk Road.
Baidu, a company commonly referred to as China's
Google is now letting customers pay in BTC.

The company made the announcement on its blog Tuesday. Baidu's Bitcoin address has received just 21 payments so far totaling .22 Bitcoin or $34 USD. At least one payment is a joke, involving a very small amount of Bitcoin; the sender is using Baidu's newly popular Bitcoin address to post a public message mocking Preet Bharara, the U.S. federal prosecutor who filed a criminal complaint in New York against Silk Road.

This is not the first time that a publicly traded company has dipped its toe into Bitcoin payments. IAC started doing so when it let OkCupid members pay with the virtual currency. But like IAC -- which didn't open up Match.com to BTC-paid memberships -- Baidu, China's most popular website, is just wading into Bitcoin. As pointed out by the San Francisco Chronicle, Baidu is not accepting Bitcoin company-wide, but just for its security service:

At this point, Baidu is only taking bitcoin for Jiasule, a security service that provides firewalls and helps fend of distributed denial of service attacks. Companies like CloudFlare in the United States provide similar services which help websites deal with a barrage of traffic, whether from good guys or bad guys. So it’s important to be clear that the adoption is not across the entire company.